When Earth is your domain

Cal State Fullerton has a geography club on campus. Some of the club members include, from rear left, Anthony Macias, Melissa Miller, Anay Palafox, front left, Nick Kline, Gregory Weisberg, club president Roland Pacheco, at globe, Kevin Erbas-White and Ivana Mckonic. H. LORREN AU JR., STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

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Current and past members of the Cal State Fullerton's Geography Club hike on Hawaii's Big Island. COURTESY OF IVANA MCKONIC, COURTESY OF IVANA MCKONIC

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Geography students and professors from Cal State Fullerton and Irvine Valley College hike during an Association of Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG) Conference in 2013. They were heading up to Eagle Lake, Ca. COURTESY OF IVANA MCKONIC

Cal State Fullerton has a geography club on campus. Some of the club members include, from rear left, Anthony Macias, Melissa Miller, Anay Palafox, front left, Nick Kline, Gregory Weisberg, club president Roland Pacheco, at globe, Kevin Erbas-White and Ivana Mckonic. H. LORREN AU JR., STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

What is geography?

Geography is the study of the earth as the home of humanity. Geography provides a broad understanding of the processes that unite people, places and environments.

Geographers explore the diverse regions of the contemporary world in pursuit of global understanding. They tie together the study of human spatial organizations and cultural landscapes with an in-depth investigation of the earth's landforms, climates and vegetation. Their methods range from fieldwork in foreign areas to advanced information technologies like computerized geographic information systems and remote sensing.

Grace Conboy began at Cal State Fullerton as a business major, but business wasn’t for her.

“I never felt comfortable in that building,” she said. “I never made any friends.”

Then she took an introductory geography class and liked it. One more geography class and she was hooked.

“I made friends with everybody,” Conboy said. Everybody is really nice here. You actually get involved when you become friends with a lot of people.”

Geography is a teeny tiny major at Cal State Fullerton, relative to other majors such as business, with about 70 undergraduate students and about 20 graduate students.

Fewer students makes it easier for them to get to know each other. It also means more individualized attention from their professors. “We have the benefit of having a small student to teacher ratio,” student Ivana Mckonic said.

Members of the geography club recently held a meeting in the geography lounge on the fourth floor of the Humanities and Social Sciences building and let this journalist sit in and ask questions. Geography club activities include cultural food night, monthly brown bag speakers, kickball, hikes and camping.

Roland Pacheco, president of the geography club, got into geography after being a history major. “It was something that interested me to a point where I was excited,” he said.

Most of the students in the program began college studying something else before uncovering their passion for geography. One common bond is that they like to travel. And a lot of them aren’t into math – geography doesn’t delve into the realm of calculus. But they do like science.

“You’ll rarely meet a miserable geographer,” Mckonic said. She began college in psychology and then chemistry and biology. Geography combines her love of culture and travel. “It has the scientific aspects I was craving without sitting in a lab all day,” she said.

One thing they’re not is geology majors. People mix them up all the time, Mckonic said. Geography is the study of the Earth in context with humanity. Geology is the study of Earth’s physical structure and characteristics.

There is at least one student who’s studying both geology and geography. “I’m the oddball of the group,” Anthony Macias said.

They tease him that he needs to pick a side. Since geography and geology play against each other in kickball, he sometimes actually does have to pick a side.

Geography might bring to mind memorizing state capitals or places on a map. But it’s more than that. It’s understanding rattlesnake habitats, preserving grasslands, understanding climate patterns, learning other cultures, finding spatial patterns of poverty and knowing where to construct a building. For example, a new store couldn’t be built atop a rare species habitat.

“It’s an important field. It affects everything,” Mckonic said. “Your life itself is affected by geography. Your culture, your language, the things you eat, the things you choose to do everyday, where you get your water from. That’s all geography,” she said.

Geographers have a number of career paths, including urban planning, teaching, cartography (map making) and environmental consulting.

The 2012 median pay for geographers was $74,760 and the field is growing faster than average for all occupations, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Mckonic was exposed to geography starting in fifth grade. She went to school in Croatia, where her family is from. When she came back to the states for high school, she was way ahead of her classmates in geography. Some of her classmates didn’t know north from south on a map. It was a culture shock, she said.

Macias had a better experience at Glen L. Martin Elementary in Santa Ana. His fifth grade teacher covered physical and cultural aspects of geography and helped spark his love of both geography and geology. “I had a good teacher,” he said.

Students learn to use geography software that allows them to manipulate data and make meaningful, layered maps. “Think of it like Google Earth on incredible steroids,” said Kevin Erbas-White, a geography student who graduated this month with a master’s degree.

These student geographers think of the Earth as their domain. They’re also specialists who have an affinity for the natural environment. “I’ve always been interested in what goes on in the world around me,” Erbas-White said.

His specialty is rattlesnakes. He studies how different species divide up their habitat in order to coexist without competing for resources. Some animals split resources through time, he said. Some are active during day, and others at night.

Rattlesnakes divide up their habitat. Southern California has five different species of rattlesnakes, including two that live within 10 feet of each other. Orange County has three species, including the southern pacific, which has contributed to the most reported bites. They live under logs and rocks and they’re out during mating season.

Erbas-White’s career plan is likely to involve snakes, he said.

Before going to Cal State Fullerton, Gregory Weisberg was set to become a manager for a retailer in Colorado. “I was like, ‘I do not want to do this for the next five to 10 years of my life.’”

The geography graduate student considered majoring in geology, but after taking assistant professor Mark Drayse’s Geographical Thought class, he was sold on geography. Geographical thought is the process of understanding the geography from the cultural, political, physical and economic perspectives.

“There’s a dark period of racism in geography,” he said. Geographers use to say that people from the tropics were naturally lazy because of the climate. “You have to talk about it and it’s kind of uncomfortable,” he said. “It’s important to face those things.”

Sometimes the work can be tedious, such as geocoding, the process of assigning geographical mapping coordinates to physical addresses. The data can then be manipulated, analyzed and mapped for a variety of purposes within many fields. A business, for example, might want to target advertising to certain Zip codes.

Geography is rewarding, even the monotonous parts, Weisberg said. “You get to be part of something bigger.”

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